ISI used JeM to carry out terror attacks in India: Pervez Musharraf exposes Pakistan on Jaish-e-Mohammad

Mar 6 (AZINS) Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf has said that Pakistan's intelligence agencies used Masood Azhar-led Jaish-e-Mohammad to carry out attacks on Indian soil during his tenure as head of the state.

Musharraf's statement has exposed Pakistan's claims that it has nothing to do with the terror group which claimed responsibility for the recent Pulwama attack which resulted in the death of 40 CRPF personnel. Pakistan Army has even claimed that JeM does not exist in Pakistan.

While Army is denying the presence of JeM in Pakistan, its government has claimed to have taken into ‘preventive detention’ for ‘investigation’ 44 terrorists of Jaish-e-Mohammad. Jaish chief Masood Azhar's brother Mufti Rauf Asghar and son Hammad Azhar were also taken into preventive custody by Pakistan on Tuesday amid mounting pressure from India and global community.

Commenting on these developments, former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf admitted that Pakistan intelligence agency ISI was hands in gloves with Jaish-e-Mohammad to carry out bomb blasts in India.

Musharraf made the revelation in an interview to a Pakistani journalist on ‘Hum TV digital’.

Welcoming the decision to detain JeM operatives, Musharraf said that this was a right move by the Pakistan government since he has been asserting for a long time that these are terrorist organisations. He said that the assassination attempt on his life in 2003 on the Jhanda Chichi bridge was carried out by JeM and for him Jaish will always remain a terrorist organisation.

A 2-minute clip of the interview was posted on Twitter by Nadeem Malik, who talked to Musharraf, on March 5.

When asked why he did not take any action against the Jaish leadership and the organisation when he was in power, Musharraf suggested that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies were using the Jaish to carry out bombings in India.

“Those were different times. Our intelligence men were involved in a tit-for-tat between India and Pakistan. They were conducting bomb blasts in Pakistan and we were getting it done there (in India). This was continuing at that time and amid all of this, no major action was taken against the Jaish. And I also did not insist,” Musharraf said.